Wildfire Smoke Disrupts Oregon Shakespeare Festival

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland said this week that wildfire smoke had cost it about $2 million this year. The smoke has also taken a toll on a series of free outdoor performances presented as part of the festival: The rest of those shows have been canceled.

Bill Rauch, the festival’s artistic director, said in an interview that the financial losses are a result of more than 20 performances of the three outdoor main-stage shows having been either canceled or moved to a smaller indoor theater, which has diminished ticket revenue. Reduced attendance has also contributed. In recent years, the festival has reported around $20 million in ticket sales.

The free performances, called Green Show, were to run until October; they will conclude Sunday. Most of the series has either been canceled or moved indoors since the middle of July because of air-quality concerns.

“This was a painful but necessary decision,” Rauch said in a statement. “Given the extra resources, time and energy required to repeatedly move outdoor performances to indoor venues, and the financial impacts of smoke-related performance cancellations, we must keep our company’s focus on our 10 spectacular main-stage productions.”

Those productions will continue to run as scheduled through October.

Wildfires have been burning in Oregon since June, and several large fires remain active.

A team at the festival meets each morning to assess the air quality and the forecast for the day to determine whether to cancel or move a performance, Rauch said. If it seems as if the air quality will be poor, that night’s outdoor performances are moved indoors. But if there is a chance of good air quality, organizers wait until the evening to decide. Shows are sometimes canceled at the last minute if air quality deteriorates during the day.

On Thursday, for example, the Oregon State Air Quality Index — which measures pollutants in the air — rose as high as 190 for Ashland, according to the state’s Department of Environmental Quality. The Environmental Protection Agency considers any value between 151 to 200 “unhealthy” and says that at those levels, “Everyone may begin to experience some adverse health effects.”

“These are unprecedented wildfires that we face on the West Coast and in our region,” Rauch said. But, he added, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival “has been here for 83 years now, and we’re here to stay.”